We are a nation of fatherless children raised by embittered solo mothers.
An Empire of broken Fathers and fractured Men holding on by a thread in these Shaky Isles with the cold embrace of an infinite loneliness the only road.
The Daughters of Kate Sheppard swipe right.
They have hollow homes but better careers.
As middle class spinsters de-center men from their joyless knitted baking sourdough lives, two old souls go slowly mad.
Labour Mum and National Dad.
We are not allowed to talk about Russell John Tully.
He is the nameless horror outside the rattling windows whistling gaps from underfunded maintenance.
WINZ and MSD are sociopathic organisations staffed with burn outs who grow to despise the vulnerability and weakness of their ‘clients’.
It is an ocean of petty tyrants who enjoy the power sadistically and take great joy in declining requests while lecturing.
Russell John Tully was a fractured man at the end of that tether and he shot up and murdered WINZ Staff in an act of violence that freaked the entire bureaucratic establishment out.
The deal between the neoliberal welfare agencies and the Government of the day that underfunds them is that they are not held to account for the harvest of bitterness their spite produces.
Russell John Tully’s violent defiance threatened to overwhelm the barriers put in place to dehumanise and belittle the poor, and that is why he is made invisible while every single WINZ Office is now staffed and manned by burly security guards who intimidate the moment your shadow darkens the door.
We are not allowed to talk about Russell John Tully any more than we are allowed to talk about Neil Roberts who blew up part of the Wanganui Police Computer Centre. His graffiti just before he attacked the Police Computer was driven by a realisation of what mass surveillance allowed the State…
…we know their anger is righteous but we turn away in fear at their snapping point.
Just like many are doing by providing Tom Philips and his children protection.
The Empire of broken Fathers that the Family Court has produced alongside the punitive child support sanctions has generated a subterranean culture that has poisoned the ground water of masculinity into a fervent bitterness that pushes a father to flee with his children and go on the run.
To even examine the issue from that perspective is Russell John Tully and Neil Roberts level cultural offensiveness that demands total James K Baxter level censorship.
Tom Philips is just another fractured Man in an Empire of broken Fathers.
When the Police finally corner him, they will shoot him dead because just like Tully and Roberts, he must be erased.
Ballad of Calvary Street
by James K Baxter
On Calvary Street are trellises
Where bright as blood the roses bloom,
And gnomes like pagan fetishes
Hang their hats on an empty tomb
Where two old souls go slowly mad,
National Mum and Labour Dad.
Each Saturday when full of smiles
The children come to pay their due,
Mum takes down the family files
And cover to cover she thumbs them through,
Poor Len before he went away
And Mabel on her wedding day.
The meal-brown scones display her knack,
Her polished oven spits with rage,
While in Grunt Grotto at the back
Dad sits and reads the Sporting page,
Then ambles out in boots of lead
To weed around the parsnip bed.
A giant parsnip sparks his eye,
Majestic as the Tree of Life;
He washes it and rubs it dry
And takes it in to his old wife –
‘Look Laura, would that be a fit?
The bastard has a flange on it!’
When both were young she would have laughed,
A goddess in her tartan skirt,
But wisdom, age and mothercraft
Have rubbed it home that men like dirt:
Five children and a fallen womb.
A golden crown beyond the tomb.
Nearer the bone, sin is sin,
And women bear the cross of woe,
And that affair with Mrs Flynn
(It happened thirty years ago)
Though never mentioned, means that he
Will get no sugar in his tea.
The afternoon goes by, goes by,
The angels harp above a cloud;
A son-in-law with spotted tie
And daughter Alice fat and loud
Discuss the virtues of insurance
And stuff their tripes with trained endurance.
Flood-waters hurl upon the dyke
And Dad himself can go to town,
For little Charlie on his trike
Has ploughed another iris down.
His parents rise to chain the beast,
Brush off the last crumbs of their lovefeast.
And so these two old fools are left,
A rosy pair in evening light,
To question Heaven’s dubious gift,
To hag and grumble, growl and fight:
The love they kill won’t let them rest,
Two birds that peck in one fouled nest
Why hammer nails? Why give no change?
Habit, habit clogs them dumb.
The sacred Heart above the range
Will bleed and burn till Kingdom Come,
But Yin and Yang won’t ever meet
In Calvary Street, in Calvary Street.
Yes we are only told part of the story .How did they arrive at this point in time ?I have been told the real story which the mother and the media are not telling the rest of NZ .lETS JUST SAY SHE IS FAR FROM SQUEAKY CLEAN .
A male member of our family was instructed by a female police officer to obtain a protection order from the family court after being assulted by his wife who wanted him out of the house so she tried to play the bashed partner ,but the police were all over her bull shit .When he went to get his protection order the court registrar laughed in his face and said he was not entitled to one because he is male .
I can see why Tom has done what he has done as he was never going to get a fair go even after rearing these kids on his own for 3 years .
Yes there are a lot of arsehole fathers out there but there is a growing number of women hell bent on destroying the life of there childrens father so they can take him to the cleaner .The family court has an unconcious bias toward the mum according to my sons lawyer .
Every week my son gets fucked over by his boys mum changing the joint care agreement because having her child interferes with her social life .
I have personally been stuck in the family court for almost three years, very similar to the time that Mr Phillips disappeared with his kids, I disappeared without mine. I was in a violent relationship but the family court never took this into account; I am a big man, how could a woman half my size terrorise me?
Fathers are undervalued and investigation shows that most crime is driven by fatherless young people.
A blight amongst so many others in our society.
Don’t talk about suicide, road deaths or anything except through statistics. These are human lives that are lost, and we should be talking about how to save our vulnerable.
Such a powerful lament. Should be compulsory reading for every public servant.
The simple solution to the Tom Phillips and family situation is to call an AMNESTY to all, not offer a reward. The the healing can begin.
I think the amnesty idea would be good – setting up an old-fashioned and useful joint meeting and getting points of agreement. Then fears stated about what could go wrong and listening, responding and adjusting. Then a pilot period with a break away for all to discuss and something permanent for at least a couple of years that is mandatory and possible. Now that would be ‘social investment’.
Not to mention the poor bastard that set himself on fire on the steps of parliament a few years back. What was his story? He barely got a mention at all in the news at the time and largely forgotten since.
https://www.stuff.co.nz/national/97119812/man-who-died-after-setting-himself-alight-had-been-protesting-family-court-issues
Note that I don’t get any input from stuff from this link just an empty screen. What a useless newspaper we saved from Fairfax. Toilet paper is more useful.
Unfortunately, as a society, we don’t call out women who behave badly in relationship breakups.
Thanks for a well-reasoned article. As far as I know, there is no suggestion that Tom Philips is likely to harm his children, himself, or his ex-wife so we do not need any gung-ho police rushing in to cause the outcome you mentioned. However, I also fear that some unaccountable police action that the MSM will fully endorse will cause that to happen. There is a real vacuum of information regarding the circumstances involved & while I can only presume the evidence would suggest that Tom has enough friends who support his view & provide for him so this is not an open-and-shut case by any means.
I wish that there was a fair system where both sides could have a rational discussion with the aim of resolving their differences that took account of the welfare of all the people involved without the threat of prison before any proven crimes. I guess that the alleged bank robbery would make that difficult though.
Yes Bonnie, you remind me that there was a move towards mediation being used a lot, very many decades ago. That was when we functioned with people in mind. Now we have business ideas in mind and people are called human resources, and probably referred to as units in some plans. So ergo, less interest in the effect of conditions and a desire to assist people, instead mad laws and puritan, authoritarian attitudes pressing down on soft human flesh and soft human brains. And the new way of turning to machines and a thinking that comes from indoctrination.
Excellent article. Heartbreaking. Like it or not kids do better with a mum and a dad. In my opinion open support for two parent families would help cure a number of persistent evils in this country.
That is so close to old-fashioned welfare state principles enabling citizens to fulfil their roles with a little bit of help. Now the opposite is true, the problems are increased, kindness is not evident and even efficiency is lacking with punitive steps as well. Humans are out of fashion – too messy. The mags and papers are always talking about decluttering – is that to make it easier to clear people out of their nests. The system killed off huias, now it is coming in its updated form for humans.
The social problems we have are as a result of our own lack, and our parents and grand-parents going back along the line to avail themselves and ensure that courtesies and respect are passed on and practised. The wise manners from so many who have died with no-one acting on their counsel, so letting it drop like a fashion is strange. When we changed from religious dogma to placing our beliefs in science, we made the same mistake – put human thought up as gospel. And the problems of that is that ‘gospel’ is interpreted human thought with divine meanings, which we all receive and interpret in our different ways!
Lord Chesterfield’s Letters to his Sons ans Others comes from the 1700s. And surprise, his advice still applies, perhaps even more. Try shining and distinguishing yourself by your good-breeding. Consider…whether it is not essentially your interest, by your own good-breeding to others, to secure theirs to you; and that, let me assure you, is the only way of doing it; for people will repay, and with interest too, inattention with inattention, neglect with neglect, and ill manners with worse; which may engage you in very disagreeable affairs.
A woman in my family was completely destroyed by a dullard male family court Judge. The cruel outcome has rent our family into pieces. It will echo through the generations. That judge was an arrogant brutal fool. I accept many men get a rough deal. I know they do. But the system itself has plenty of room for improvement still.
Skoll. I am so sorry about what happened in your family, and I know that the impact does echo throughout the generations. I am forever haunted by the kindest woman I have ever known being destroyed by two sisters and their lawyer. She may have been driven out of her mind, and she died of natural causes about ten years later, at far too young an age.
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